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Reciprocity

Establishing Reciprocity

Reciprocity and Joint Attention
are closely related skills. When there is reciprocity between two
people, they are intentionally interacting in a back and forth manner.
For example, when you callyour child and your child responds by looking at you or saying "What?" this is an example of reciprocity. When your child requests a teddy and you respond by providing that toy, this is an example of reciprocity. The reciprocal interaction can be extended into several exchanges as when

your child comes to you crying

you say, "AW, HONEY, WHAT HAPPENED?"

your child points to his bleeding knee

you go and get a band aid

your child grabs your hand before you try to wash his knee

you say, "Daddy will be careful!"

your child asks "Be careful?"

you say "I will be very, very, very careful"

your child asks "Go doctor?"

you say "Pretend daddy is a doctor"

you pour some pretend liquid into a pretend glass

your child watches what you are doing carefully

you say,"this is knee medicine"

your child takes the pretend glass from you and pretends to drink it

your child grins at you

you grin back.

It is Hard to Establish Joint Attention & Reciprocity

Sometimes,
in the early days of working with a youngster who has any form
of autism, I think that all the stars in heaven need to be aligned just
right to make joint attention possible and at best, we get one back and
forth reciprocal interaction. We persist, showing the child little
routines that are delightful and short (just one back and forth) and
pretty soon, we hit upon the right combination and the child jumps in
to play a game.

There are
also moments when child looks straight at me and I feel that our
emotions are
aligned. The child knows I am there. He or she either likes or does
not like what I am doing at that moment and communicates this clearly
and intentionally. At that point, we are not only
sharing attention, we are in a reciprocal interaction, because I have
been waiting for this moment and
I respond. Often, as I show a parent how to respond to these moments
of intentional communication, even if it is just a look or a gesture,
parents say that they did not know this was the beginning of
communication. They think they are suppose to wait for something
more. Parents think they are waiting for a word and sometimes a word,
plus "please". The beginning of reciprocity is when a parent notices
what a child does and responds. If you as a parent notice moments of
shared attention, when the child sees that you both are looking at the
same thing, doing the same thing, feeling the same thing and responds
to this, communication has truly begun. This is real communication
because it is not a child just repeating what he or she has been told
to say but rather a moment of genuine social interaction.